Financial Transparency Coalition

THE ECONOMIST—CONGRESSMEN working late into the summer nights to overhaul America’s system of financial regulation were surprised when Bono started lobbying them. Yet the rocker-cum-campaigner helped to insert a far-reaching change into the legislation they were drafting. It has nothing directly to do with America’s financial mess, but it will push forward the fight against corruption in the developing world, a cause which has made some much-needed progress recently.

Our friends at Revenue Watch have just finished translating the Publish What You Pay / Country-by-Country Reporting provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform legislation into Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish. Section 1504 of the recent Dodd-Frank Act requires country-by-country and project-by-project reporting by all extractive companies listed on the SEC. Read / download (PDF) the translations below:

• Arabic | عربي
• Chinese | 中文
• French | Français
• Russian | Русский
• Spanish | Español

On the International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB’s) website, many CSOs including Eurodad have contributed to the IASB Discussion Paper on extractive activities, arguing in favor of a comprehensive country by country reporting standard for the extractive industries, a standard currently being reviewed. There are also contributions from other stakeholders that are openly opposed to such a standard. Interestingly, the World Bank also made a very assertive contribution, which strongly supports a country by country reporting standard in the extractive sector. World Bank strongly backs PWYP Proposals on country by country reporting The entire submission from the World Bank...

The Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development called on the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) this past week to adopt Publish What You Pay's (PWYP) proposal to require a country-by-country reporting standard in the extractive industries (oil, gas and mining). The standards proposed by PWYP (and supported by the Task Force and many other NGOs) would require companies to disclose the payments they make to the governments in which they operate. These standards are vital in assuring that multi-national corporations (MNCs) pay a just amount of taxes and that payments made between their subsidiaries are both...